for a while i’ve been signing electronic communication with ./peretz. it’s a personal reference to a summer spent in a portland basement working at an open source non-profit. it’s also an obscure reference to ./ command line prefix used in linux to execute a non-executable file in a directory with execution privileges. essentially, it’s a trick to activate a disguised script and i thought it was a clever way to affect activating myself in signature. due to my policy of constant turnover in all unessential habits, i’ve been phasing this out.

recently i received an official document, titled attestation en anglais with a typo. the final punctuation before the sigature was ./ . i immediately wrote back to alert the authorities of this typo. the secretary to the french ambassador to nepal wrote back:

The “./.” at the end is called “the diplomatic point”.

google can’t confirm, but it makes complete sense for a diplomat to use this command line trick to mark the writing executive.